A Number of Days
by Shuturgal
Summary: "The other cup of tea sat by the windowsill, John having moved it so he could watch the steam lazily rise out the cup to only dissipate meeting the frigid air. He'd like to pretend that the World's Only Consulting Detective was about race through the front door. John liked to pretend a lot of things."


Day 150 alone.

John would like to pretend that this milestone makes it feel easier, that now he has suffered through 3600 hours of blasted silence he can pretend it's not deafening. That it's not _sentiment_that makes him keep the extra cup of tea he mistakenly makes on autopilot rather than pour it down the drain, allowing it to go cold on the kitchen table. That he _doesn't_sit and refresh his blog over and over again in hopes that a new case will appear, or a new blog post will write itself.

Of course it won't, Scotland Yard don't want anything to do with him anymore. He's not Sherlock (_see there, he said the name, he's coping fine_). He can't solve a case based on the colour of someone's hair, or find a murderer just because they don't like cats. The only things John was ever really good for was killing people and stitching up the people he didn't murder. A walking contradiction. That was the _good and honourable_Dr John Watson. The dichotomy of his role had never been lost on Sherlock, in fact it had probably been the reason he had been so interested in John in the first place. Though it didn't matter anymore, it had been so long he'd forgotten to do either, especially since the highest-pressure scenario work could provide was dispatching the common cold, and so his one skill lay solely in tea making.

Tea making was methodical, comfortable and easy. Tea making helped keep the tremors at bay. And holding a hot cup of English breakfast in his hand meant his hands couldn't hold cold metal instead.

It was shaping up to be one of those days. One of the dark days, where the bleak and black weather outside matched his mood, and meant he almost wanted to reach for the similarly bleak and black Sig Sauer, just so he could taste that familiar metallic snap of death and metal and dream just for a moment what it would be like if he pulled the trigger.

Nothing would happen, of course. He had long ago removed and thrown out all ammunition on a better day. He couldn't trust himself to not wish for oblivion on the dark days. It would be so much easier than pretending.

They had all understood at first, they said _give him space to grieve_ and that _it was only natural you were such good friends_and they had pretended to ignore the papers and the headlines and the hate. But as the days crept by in an achingly slow and repetitive march the understanding gave way to annoyance and the whispers began.

All the whispers had a name, of course.

_"They weren't even friends for that long."_

_"Something tells me they were more than friends."_

_"You think so?"_

_"I always thought so. If he was just a friend, why on earth would he grieve this much? It's not right, not really, not after the things Sherlock did. He held him hostage for god's sake."_

So John pretended. He bought milk and he threw himself into work so he could lecture people about the norovirus and he went down to the pub with Lestrade every Friday night so he could listen to the DI vent about his wife. He faked normalcy and everyone was so desperate to believe he was over it they ate it up. They ignored the fact his limp was back and they ignored the intermittent tremors in his left hand. They even ignored the crutch he had taken to carrying again, putting it down to a trigger memory of Afghanistan. Because people believe they see what they want to see after all. The irony was such that if Sherlock was here he'd probably have been able to deduce what was wrong with him just due to the patch of worried skin on his right thumb or the fact every morning he sat a piece of fruit beside him and every evening it was still there, beginning to soften and rot in the dying sun.

The other cup of tea sat by the windowsill, John having moved it so he could watch the steam lazily rise out the cup to only dissipate meeting the frigid air. He'd like to pretend that the World's Only Consulting Detective was about race through the front door, all coat tails and flying insults wrapped up in fancy English language before grabbing the cup of tea and allowing his brain to do more of the legwork.

John liked to pretend a lot of things.

He knew Mrs Hudson was worried for him. Her weekly visits became twice weekly, and then daily when she had caught him palming the Sig Sauer one particularly bleak and black morning. They had stood at a standoff in fractured silence for a minute or two before John cast the gun aside and began talking how he had needed to clean the carriage as though they both didn't know the real reason he had held an instrument of death in his hand.

They hadn't talked about it since, and instead John grew to anticipate the seventeen quiet footfalls that would bring her to the door. He also grew to hate the look of relief in her eyes every time she opened the door, like one day she expected to come in and see his brain smeared across the walls.

He also hated that her relief was well founded. One of the early days, she had come into the room and sat on that chair that Sherlo - _don't don't say it don't - _and had cried and cried muttering about how _she couldn't lose them both she couldn't, not her boys_ and John had spoken empty, hollow words in reassurance. He'd be careful to avoid any promises, because he knew in time she'd get over it, she'd survive but John wasn't sure how to function when one half of his heart had stopped beating.

Still, with every day ending in zero _after that day_marked an anniversary, and John was nothing if not religious in his time keeping. With a heavy sigh, he stood up, joints creaking with lack of use, and walked to the door, hesitating slightly as he saw the scarf hung up by the doorframe. Sherlock's. He wrapped his hands up in the red fabric, the movement jostling it and releasing a smell that was just pure _him._Before he could think twice about how pathetic and stupid such a gesture would be, John unhooked the scarf and wound it twice round his neck in short and sharp military movements. Glancing around briefly at the forlorn cup of tea slowly chilling beside the windowpane, he switched off the light and pitched the room into darkness before leaving the flat.

John had once loved London, but as he sat on the bus he couldn't remember why. He didn't take black cabs anymore, he preferred to lose himself in the monotonous chatter on a bus than sit perched in the back of a taxi trying not to remember all the memories of the man who so often had perched next to him. It took him longer to get to his destination, granted, but infinitely preferable to the suffocating silence he would have sat through, peppered by pathetic small talk made by the cabbie.

Plus he'd remember a different cabbie, one he found too easy to put a bullet through the head of if it meant saving his friend of less than twenty-four hours. _Sometimes,_on those dark days, he wonders what would have happened if he hadn't pulled the trigger that night, whether _he_would have swallowed the pill, and whether their friendship would have ended before it had even truly begun with the dying breaths of a detective chasing that one final rush.

_"Keep your eyes fixed on me."_

__John hadn't managed to tell him that he'd never had his eyes anywhere else. From the first moment they met with the _Afghanistan or Iraq? _to the last moments and _Goodbye John _he had never stopped looking at Sherlock, always running ahead and John trying with all his heart to keep up.

Standing up slowly, he grabbed his cane from where it reclined in the chair beside him, ignoring the pitying glances of elderly faces, and shuffled to the front of the bus, stumbling out as it slid to a stop. Every step towards his destination was a painful one, the knowledge that in front of him his best friend lay dead in the dirt causing sharp stabs of pain to curl up his spine. Upon reaching the polished marble, he grabbed the headstone with a white-knuckled grip and barked out a laugh. His voice cracked on such an alien sound, and it ended as more of a sob.

_"I'll burn the__heart __out of you!"_Moriarty had said and John had to laugh with the sad irony. Sherlock's heart was gone, and had taken John's as collateral damage, leaving him with an empty chest that could barely remember what it was like to beat.

_"Alone is what I have. Alone protects me."_Sherlock had uttered on that _damn_day.

John cannot think of what he had said next.


End file.
